Our reporters came back from NAB with a renewed sense of mission regarding HD. Although most were surprised that the gauntlet thrown down by JVC with their HDV camcorder seemed to go relatively unanswered, other unexpected developments such as the Panasonic/Apple announcements around Final Cut Pro HD fueled their convictions that HD is more important — and potentially more confusing than ever.

And so we begin a multi-issue look at HD-related issues, both the potential for “traditional” high-end HD and that of lower cost HD. This month's cover story looks at three applications of HD in the corporate world. The projects are quite varied and the reasons for choosing HD are project specific, though most at least mention the concept of “future proofing.” It's a terrible word, and some would say a marketing pitch more than a real business concern, but read the stories and see for yourself.

While these three case studies employed the costlier, high-end permutations of HD, in this issue we also continue to explore fundamentals that will apply to those of you planning to work in HDV or similar formats. Steve Mullen starts a series of HD-related articles with a review of the basics of MPEG-2 compression for HD on page 19. Mullen also reviews one of several cards that offers HD editing options — Pinnacle's newest version of CinéWave on page 36.

In his column on page 33, Bob Turner takes a look at the headline-making Final Cut Pro HD, as well as the lesser-hyped but also important Pinnacle Liquid HD. Jeff Sauer takes a more speculative look at HD on page 64 as he considers the potential format wars surrounding HD's place on DVD.

In upcoming issues, Steve Mullen will tackle workflow issues raised by HDV. Next month he discusses technical details that will influence the development of the HDV format and begins to investigate the editing dilemmas that arise with larger HDV files, as well as sharing techniques for editing HDV on Sony's newest release of Vegas. Throughout the fall he will continue to pursue workflow options for HDV, including product-based options, systems-based approaches, and workarounds.

Next month Bob Turner examines the arguments for and against uncompressed and compressed HD for postproduction. In September, S.D. Katz considers desktop color correction with an eye towards HD application.

We'll also look at the potential for HD display, including an examination next month of the award-winning National Constitution Center, a modern example of how HD replaces film in the service-sensitive, update-intensive world of location-based display.

Of course, HD will not be our sole focus in the coming months, but we felt it was important to offer some concrete and useful information. If there are any additional specifics of HD that you would like to see covered please let us know at vsfeedback@primediabusiness.com.